Mike McAfee Good Quotations

From the first quarter, right on through the fourth, I feel our kids played a good game. It's always our hope that everyone will get involved and it was great to see Kyle Morrow come in and play well. I'm hopeful that Kyle can continue to come in and contribute.

Jay had a stellar night. He made five field goals inside, hit 2-of-2 at the line. He really did a good job.

Travis played a really good second half. He plays big in big situations.

Michael always comes in and gives it 100 percent. He's another one of the quiet kids on the team. He's always thinking, 'What's going to happen here?' He's a player's player. He's ready for what's going to happen and he plays good defense and he came in and gave us a big spark because of his energy. And one of the things we talked about was that we had to play with intensity and Michael came in and took that to heart. He played with intensity and it was evident that it gave us a pickup.

We didn't do a very good job of denying the ball to Conklin. He's a pretty skilled player. He's a scrappy player. He likes to get out and mix it up.

We played a good game except for getting the ball in the basket.

That fourth quarter was like a game within a game. Jackson was working hard, and knocking down shots, and I felt our kids were working hard too. I was really proud of the way we maintained our composure. We stayed on the attack, on both ends. That made the difference for us. Our guards did a good job of controlling the ball, and getting everyone involved in the game. We finished the night with just nine turnovers, that stat alone is significant in our success. I'd be happy with that just about any night.

His leadership was definitely there. He did such a good job as a leader on the floor. Even when he wasn't in the game he was a leader on the floor and that was a really important part of our success for the year was having him accept that role. There were times when he took the team on his shoulders and carried them through - showed them the way, which is big. It shows a lot of heart, a lot of leadership and a lot of ability.

He's an all-around player. The nice thing about him is he can shoot the ball and shoot it with a good deal of accuracy. He makes his free throws too. He's just now starting to get an idea of what he can do when he really works at it.

We try to approach the end of the quarters on a high note, and that can be a great defensive stand or a good offensive opportunity. I think our kids are understanding the power of momentum more and more and we certainly want the momentum swinging our way, so we'll play good defense or work for the best shot or both. Maintaining our focus was a key to our success.

It was a really good game and Taft has a good team. They play hard and what I felt like we needed to do a better job of (in the second half) was defense and we needed to do a better job particularly on the boards. Playing better defensively was what we talked about at halftime. And I thought we did. Our offense starts on defense. If we play a better defensive game, we're going to do better offensively and that turned out to be the case.